Where is…?

Incoming calls. Panicked looks. Everyone is wondering where my aunt is and why she didn’t pick up her daughter from school that afternoon. My mom, cousin, other aunt, and uncle who is married to my missing aunt gathered around the kitchen. I try to distract my younger cousin who doesn’t know what happened to her Mommy in her playroom, when there is a knock at the door.

Being an educated and safe driver is not only important for your own safety, but for the safety of everyone around you. When someone isn’t smart about their choices when driving, it can be harmful both mentally and physically to the masses. There are too many deaths a year due to drunk driving, and that is only a fraction of the total amount of car fatalities. Vehicle fatality rates are up to 102 a day, and this can be due to the uneducation of drivers and the effect this has on society.

My heart broke hearing that my aunt had been arrested for crashing into a building after driving under the influence, because that wasn’t the person I knew. And while addiction is a whole other battle, educating people on how reckless driving doesn’t only affect the driver but it also affects those who love them can make a big difference in how people might mentally prepare when they’re about to drive. I think including how impactful accidents can be should be a part of drivers education, because I know when I took my drivers ed, I was not nearly made aware of the impacts it could have on lives. Although this experience occurred long before I took driver education and got my license, I will never forget the feelings I felt in this situation and I always promised myself I would never let that happen to me, as well as try to prevent it from happening to another loved one again. I often remind my friends and family to drive responsibly, and I take my own responsibility to drive the way I want other cars to drive.

There was another experience more recently, where a group of recently graduated students from my high school died in a horrific car accident after driving under the influence. Although they no longer attended the school their loss was felt all around campus, and it was just around the time of Every 15 Minutes. I think this program is another great way of showing the importance of driving smart and making good choices before and when entering a vehicle, and I don’t nearly think it is talked about enough. This program is a simulation of a car accident and 2 real students at our high school “die” and it’s meant to show what it would actually be like and the impacts it would have. It is planned over months and while it’s only a 2 day event, students see the course of the accident, the funerals and the court scenes. This kind of education can make the difference in how people, especially young people, enter their car in a certain mindset, and it can be the difference in how many lives are lost in car fatalities, as most deaths are due to driving under the influence accidents. I also think that this could be a useful strategy to use in driver’s education, and while it’d be different of course, I think that there could be some kind of adaptation of Every Fifteen Minutes that would be very useful and impactful on decreasing the amount of deaths from car accidents and reckless driving.

From these experiences, I know that I will always make smart decisions before I enter a car I’m about to drive, but I also spread this message to my loved ones and hold them accountable for their actions before they start driving. With so many losses, it’s easy to be desensitized to the true impact these losses can have on others, but I think that by using what I recommended, there may be more educated and safe drivers. I know the guilt my aunt felt after was tremendous, but it was hard to get past this incident as a family and rebuild trust, and I think that if more people were educated on driver safety, then we could prevent future issues and occurrences like what happened with my aunt, and save so much heartbreak. At the end of the day, driving safely is a choice and there will always be death because it is a part of life, but I think that by starting to educate more students on a personal level early, we can get a head start on future generations’ deaths. This doesn’t mean we should forget about the drivers now, because I think what we’d be teaching younger people could be just as useful to the drivers who have been driving for years and may stray from being the best drivers they can be because they are too comfortable. Overall, it’s hard to find ways to effectively do this, but I think that by starting small, we can eventually expand and lessen that percentage one number at a time.